Port Anthony

Port Anthony, which is also known as Barry Beach, is a small regional port in Gippsland in eastern Victoria. The port, which was developed by Ancon Australia Pty Ltd, has been proposed as opening up opportunities for brown coal export projects.

Port Anthony sits on the Corner Inlet in the vicinity of Wilson’s Promontory National Park and the Nooramunga Marine and Coastal Parks, which is part of the Corner Inlet Ramsar site that protects the habitat for migratory wading birds and contains seafloor animals and plants which are designated rare and not seen anywhere else in the State of Victoria.

Port Anthony is mainly a service depot for ships transporting food and equipment to the ExxonMobil’s oil and gas rigs and Origin Energy’s gas facilities in the Bass Straight. The shipping of supplies to rigs is contracted to Farstad Shipping ASA. Farstad Shipping is a major international supplier of large, offshore support vessels. The company’s head quarters is located in Aalesund on the North West coast of Norway. The port also acts as a pick-up and delivery depot for small cargo vessels operating between Tasmania and Gippsland.

Other interested parties linked to Port Anthony include BHP Billiton in partnership with ExxonMobil and Halliburton who are in partnership with Landmark. Halliburton and Landmark offer supply and instillation of onshore and offshore equipment. Port Anthony also houses the unused ferry terminal and associated berthing facility at Port Welshpool (constructed 1991) that was previously utilised by the Tasmanian Seacat ferry.

Bass Straight Oil
In 1985, oil production from the offshore Gippsland Basin peaked to an annual average of 450,000 barrels per day (bbls/d). In the fiscal year 2005/2006, the average daily oil production declined to 83,000 barrels a day. Bass Straight oil production still amounts to between 17% - 19% of Australia’s oil and 42% of LPG.

Port Anthony has been cited as an important component the in the joint US - Australia Energy Flagship program [‘Flagship’ which means ‘discovery’ stems from NASA]. This energy program, in part, is predicated on the new geo-sequestration technologies using fossil fuels. Geo-sequestration brings unification to the fossil fuel industries while at the same time attempting to address CO2 emissions while continuing the mining and burning of coal. These industries include open cut coal mining, carbon capture and storage and electricity generation as well as fertiliser production [biochar and other forms of biomas such as woodchip]. Also, gasification, [coal bed methane and syngas] and oil [crude and liquids].

The name Barry Beach was changed to Port Anthony with the additional purchase of land needed for the expansion. The facility is still under construction.

There are now 21 offshore platforms and installations in Bass Strait, which feed a network of 600km of underwater pipelines   In 2011 that number will increase to 23, with the addition of the new Marlin B platform and Kipper sub-sea wells. The sections of rigging  [some believed to be purchased from Indonesia]  are fitted out in modules at the Port Anthony workshops and then moved out to sea.

The Gippsland basin is a major crude oil province and important gas producer with initial provern reserves of ca 4.2 billions crude condensate 720 MMbbls LPG and 4 @ Tcf gas [2007]. Future estimates in the US Geological Survey amount to 600 million barrels of liquids and 5 Tcf of gas. Port Anthony is expected to grow accordingly, but it is not without problems, the Corner Inlet is narrow and the channel is not deep enough to accommodate the large gas and oil tankers.

Wild cat wells
On the 28th April 2010 Esso/Mobil announced the discovery of gas and oil at the South East Remora -1 exploration wild cat well, the latest in several finds in the Bass Strait. The new well, located just 35 kilometres off the Victorian coastline is one of the Latrobe and Golden Beach groups in the Gippsland Basin. The well was drilled in 57 metres of water to a depth of 3,602 metres below sea level and is 50% owned by Esso Australia Resources, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil and 50% the property of BHP Billiton Petroleum. The announcement drew public attention because it followed the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion and subsequent fire on the Deepwater rig was  about 64 km southeast of the Louisiana coast in the Macondo Prospect oil field. The explosion killed 11 workers and injured 17 others; another 98 people escaped without serious physical injury. The rig was destroyed and it left an ongoing oil spill.

The Deepwater Horizon platform commenced drilling the exploratory well in February 2010 at a water depth of approximately 1,500 metres. The planned well was to be drilled to 5,600 metres below sea level. There was no known precedent for dealing with an accident at these depths.

Australia had already had a deepwater oil spill off the west coast. The accident on the Montara West Atlas rig happened in similar circumstances to that of the Deepwater Horizon, gas was escaping and the rig burst into flames. It burned at temperatures of 350 degrees for two days before the well was plugged. All 69 workers were luckily evacuated.

However, these incidents raised questions about the safety of deepwater drilling off the coast of Gippsland where there is considerable seismic activity.

Geo-Sequestration
In 2008 the Victorian Greenhouse Gas Geological Sequestration Act brought into focus the proposed expansion in coal products using geo-sequestration technologies and this highlighted the future role for Port

Anthony with exports of fossil fuels to China expected to increase exponentially. In the 2009/10 Federal Government’s Budget allocated $2.0 billion in new funding and $2.425 billion overall towards industrial carbon capture and storage projects. The Federal Government also established the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute to drive the dissemination of CCS technology around the world. There were plans to store the CO2s in onshore and offshore aquifers and dried-up oil wells in Gippsland. Transportation would be by pipelines and/or shipping.

On April 21st 2010 the Yarram Standard reported a $30m dollar plant sourcing brown coal from Gelliondale, which lies between Port Albert and Port Anthony. Ignite Energy Resources [IER] planned to mine up to 100,000 tonnes of coal a year from Gelliondale to convert brown coal –or lignite/peat - to oil and biological fertilisers using geo-sequestration. The conversion plant was said to be located either next to the mine or at the port. Ignite Energy’s partner Cougar purchased an old milk power factory opposite Port Anthony at Toora, seemingly for the project, but the sale fell through after Cougar was forced to shut a gasification plant in Kingaroy, Queensland due to contaminated groundwater. The plans for the mine were put on hold and the plant designed to process oils and fertilisers was shifted by Ignite Energy to Yallourn in the Latrobe Valley.

Gippsland and Port Anthony Mooted as a CCS World Centre
In 2009 the Minerals Council of Australia [MCA] [Victorian Branch] produced its Vision 2020 report. The MCA document suggested a lack of infrastructure, [ports, railways, roads and telecommunications networks] had caused Australia to lose its share of the global minerals market, but the minerals market could grow again on the back of new discoveries and new technologies. According to the [MCA] Vision 2020 document the Australian Federal Government wanted to make Australia the world centre of Carbon Capture and Storage and the Gippsland area its hub. Sites for CO2 storage were compiled by the Australian School of Petroleum and the CO2 Co-operative Research Centre and they were listed in the presentations of the 2009 Victorian Minerals Conference.

The same reports identified the risk of earthquakes in Gippsland up to 5.7 magnitude possibly occurring between the towns of Foster, Morwell, Toora and Welshpool, [the latter two towns being almost adjacent to Port Anthony]. A spokesperson for the Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson denied the possibility of geo-sequestration causing earthquakes or that there were risks of contamination to underground water. The government stated that in October 2009 the Nirranda project had already stored 65,000 tons of C02s in south west Victoria alluding to its safety.

The government appeared unconcerned about a serious leaking of C02s in the Utsira formation in the North Sea, which in 2008 had been injecting 1 million tons of CO2s into the seabed, an incident that was reported worldwide by Greenpeace. This was the model held up by all governments as being safe and effective.

CCS Exploration in Gippsland
On the 30th October, 2009 the Victorian Minister for Energy and Resources invited applications for exploration permits to explore for storage formations suitable for geological carbon storage in two areas in Victoria, the Latrobe Valley and the South Gippsland Basin. By mid 2010 many of the exploration licences in the Gippsland area had been taken up and seismic studies began offshore in the Gippsland basin to update data.

Also in 2010 the Department of Primary Industries produced a Regulatory Impact Statement [RIS] Amendments to the Resources Development Regulations 2002 in relation to the 2007 collapse at the Latrobe Valley’s Yallourn open cut coal mine. The RIS warned of another collapse at the mine, which could damage a large section of the interstate highway and other infrastructure as well as put Victoria’s electricity supply at risk. Attention then turned to gasification.

In September 2010 Icon Energy announced it had acquired onshore acreage in Gippsland Basin (Gazettal Block VIC/G-10-5), to be known on award as Petroleum Exploration Permit 170, it includes the township of Darriman, in the north of the permit, and the township of Woodside, in the south, and is proximate to Port Welshpool, which, according to Icon Energy, could potentially be used as a location for future export facilities. [Port Welshpool is almost adjacent to Port Anthony]. The acreage has potential for both oil and gas and now forms part of Icon Energy's portfolio of prospective gas tenements in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.

Icon Energy Energy has entered into an MOU to supply Shenzhen SinoGas with 40 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) over a 20-year period. Notwithstanding, the role for Port Anthony remains unknown.

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 * Victoria and coal
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 * Carbon Capture and Storage in Australia
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 * Queensland and coal
 * Coal terminals